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Tuesday, August 23, 2011

How to turn a hand-drawing into a digital pattern (originally posted Oct 14, 2010)

This week is super busy for me and while I'm doing some of my other work, I thought it might be interesting for you to see a post that I did a while ago about how I make my hand-drawn patterns.
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Today is a really special post where I'm going to show you some secrets of my hand drawings in my wedding invitations. I have a degree in Drawing and Painting and, naturally, the skills and style that I create in my paintings leak into the designs for my wedding invitations. I have always been drawn to geometric designs and repetitive patterns. It wasn't until I was in college that my father showed some of his sketches (he studied art a very little bit in college before switching to be a computer engineer) and surprise! he also is deeply interested in geometry, lines, and patterns! I feel like it was meant to be!

Well, with all of that background, I'll start to explain my wedding invitation designs. While all of my designs are not hand-drawn, I feel I am unique because a lot of the designs and ideas are directly from my personal sketchbooks. It's very hard to find a unique and personal feeling wedding invitation out there, and my hand-drawn designs are perfect just for that! In the future, I will be drawing and producing many more hand-drawn designs for my wedding invitations. I want to have a plethora of great modern and yet down-to-earth designs for all brides to choose from.

A couple years before I started my business, I was sketching all the time, but I was having a really tough time getting my designs to be repetitive. It was a lot of experimentation and a lot of failures. And then one day, I happened upon this miracle of a post by Julia. Seriously, she made my life so much easier, not to mention how hooked I got at creating repeating drawings.

To sum it up, Julia teaches a simple pen and paper way to create a repeating drawing where the paper is cut and taped together. I love using this technique because it allows me to draw the design with my own hands (not relying on a computer to do the work for me). I give me a great sense of accomplishment and I love how it looks. I provided some close-up pictures so you can see how I actually cut and taped the paper back together. The flower pattern is a lot more cut-and-paste than the paisley, but they both use the same basic technique.

After I finish the design, I then scan it into the computer to erase little mistakes and color the design. I could color it by hand, but I enjoy being able to change the colors and modify the design to my needs.

Once the designs are finished, I incorporate them into my wedding invitations. Here are just three of the wedding invitations that use some of my hand-drawings. There are several more invitations on my website that utilize my hand-drawings, and you can look for even more coming up in the future!

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About the new Blog Title

"I am an Aspiring Artist" has been officially upgraded to "I am an Artist." As I finished my Bachelor's Degree in Drawing, Painting, and Printmaking, I was feeling a little discouraged as my role of an artist, mostly because of comparing myself to all the other fantastic artists around me. But as some time has passed, I have come to realize that I'm not "aspiring" anymore. Being an artist has always been an intregal part of me, well before I knew it was going to be my career.

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ALL images, including those of tutorials, actual paintings (in progress or finished), the artist's life and home, and any other photographs contained on this blog are property of the artist, Natalie Raevsky, unless otherwise cited. Images may not be used for any commercial uses without the written permission of Natalie Raevsky and only if given proper documentation, ei: name and links. Unpaid, personal uses are permitted as long as the above proper documentation is followed.